Home-made chocolate Easter eggs and squiggles

Everything is Easter-themed at the moment – I love it! Pastels, eggs, bunnies, florals, it’s fabulous. So when I saw this tutorial, which ticked two of those boxes, I knew I couldn’t miss the opportunity. And I’m so glad I tried them, they’re messy, fun, and totally rewarding.

After attempting them, though, I realised that having a water-balloon-sized Easter egg atop a cupcake is a bit ridiculous, and smashing the eggs gives you glorious little architectural pieces of chocolate, which I kind of prefer.

Home-made chocolate Easter eggs

8 water balloons

8 pegs

2-3 metal swekers

100g dark chocolate

2 tbsp sprinkles

Blow up your water balloons so that they’re just bigger than a golf ball and tie a knot in them. If you find that your balloon is looking too round, slide the knot further up the stem (is this the right word for a balloon?!) and then gently squeeze some of the air at the bottom of the balloon up towards the top. This should give you more of an oval shape. Set to one side.

Grab your pegs and skewers, and something that you can rest your skewers on (I used a mug and a jar!) Set up your skewers so that they’re secure, and you can start to peg the balloons to them once you’ve started piping.

Melt your chocolate in the microwave and scoop it into a piping bag. Leave it to sit for 1-2 minutes so that the chocolate isn’t molten, but slightly thicker – this makes it easier to work with.

Spray your balloons very lightly with spray oil.

Snip a bit of the corner off the piping bag and grab your first balloon. Pipe in spirals, zig zags, cross-hatching, whatever takes your fancy, rotating the balloon as you go. Make sure that each line of chocolate is touching another line of chocolate, as this will give your chocolate stability once it’s hardened.

Peg to your skewer and repeat with remaining balloons, then scatter sprinkles over the top of them. You’ll end up with a weird little Easter art installation if you take the same approach as me.

Pop eggs in the freezer for at least 30 minutes. Before you get them out of the freezer, grab a pair of scissors and have them handy. Get the eggs from the freezer and use the scissors to snip a small hole in the balloon, then to remove the leftover balloon from in the eggs.

If your chocolate eggs aren’t super frozen, you risk them shattering when the balloon pops. If this happens, just go with it, you’ll have some fabulous little squiggles (which is my personal preference.)

If you end up with 8 perfect eggs, well done, but you want squiggles, just press down on the chocolate instead of removing the balloon. This way, you’ll have your chocolate in neat little pieces and you’ll have eight whole balloons.

If you want to see the squiggles in action, check out my Easter cupcakes here.